Equinox
by Inkfire
Summary: Months go by, and Cassie deals. A response to the Springtime collaboration on The Reviews Lounge, Too.


**Here is a Skins one-shot I wrote for the Springtime collaboration on The Reviews Lounge, Too. Enjoy. **

* * *

It is drawing nearer.

She can feel it in the air. A different scent, a different shade to the sky beneath the clouds, a few notes of fluttering birdsong. _Springtime is coming,_ they say, laughing loudly.

_Lovely,_ Cassie thinks.

For a few seconds, it makes her smile.

* * *

Spring means a new beginning. The trees know it, the animals know it and the people know it.

It is rather silly, come to consider it, as the entire world and every ticking-by second are made of endings and beginnings. Spring is the end of winter, of the bitter cold biting her hands and slipping between her bones, of the rare, shockingly white snow that turned dirty under people's feet. All things pure come to an end – she won't regret it that much though, for Cassie can't really call herself pure either (_She wishes. She tries._) and winter was mostly eating at her strength.

It's just another season passing by.

* * *

Ten days to spring. Nine days, twenty hours and about forty minutes of carefully-counted nonsense. It's funny, that she must be the only one in the world who does this (_Is she? Is she really? Well, what does it change?_). It's funnier than it's sad, as far as she can tell. It's her secret anyway, and you don't share secrets. Sometimes she wants to, but she should hold back – you never know what might be used against you, after all.

Cassie counts time, that's what she does, keeps cautiously track of it as it trickles between her white fingers and fades away. Twenty-seven more minutes of sitting in class, two hours and a half to facing lunch and ten more to go before she can curl up in bed and be done with it all. Every second of her life is weighed and assessed before she eventually gets through, smiling like she's a girl of the carefree kind – _absolutely_ not hunched-up in fear within.

In fact, if she's quite honest with herself, Cassie cares little about spring, let alone the exact date, which might turn out cold and rainy for all she knows. It's the idea of spring that keeps her going – sunlight and pretty clouds and birds and hope and winter being over, all those childish, fragile, lovely things. Seasons fly by one after the other and at the end of the day, somehow, she's still standing.

Sweet victory.

* * *

Spring knocks at her door in the shape of a bunch of friends – who actually _want_ her with them, _wow _– and Jal tells her "Come on Cass, take off a few layers. It's so warm outside."

Jal is lovely and a very good friend – sometimes she's even insightful, too insightful, and it makes Cassie's stomach twist and flutter because she doesn't want to be noticed, but she does, she does. It's like Jal sees her as a whole, peering past layers and edges of a fumbling, confused mess that somehow shapes Cassandra Ainsworth – and she can't fool her with a large smile and a quickly-thrown question, can't pretend that she's oh, so _fine_, so_ lovely_. It's unnerving – it's unsettling, that's all. It's okay as long as she's not the main object of the focus, mostly. She is today – and she tries to laugh it off, fingers curled protectively around the edges of her jacket, but Jal nods and Michelle smiles, then before she knows it she's being hauled into the street, laughter swirling around her ears and hands pulling on her bare arms.

At that point Jal can go burn in hell and take the warmth, the spring, her knowing smile and Michelle with her daring necklines alongside her, as far as Cassie is concerned. She's not cold, she can't really pretend she is – although she's so good at lying by now that she almost wants to try – but her skin glows a striking white under the sunlight, laid bare, outlandishly pale and obscenely conspicuous. Delicate veins swirl in green-blue patterns across fragile limbs, and her friends' fingers cling to her, oddly hot, way too tight. Her throat is too tight as well, her eyes searing; if she looks down, her shape will shift and swell, like it always does – always. The sensation is as familiar as it is unreliable; it's not like she can ever really keep track of who she is, tell the difference between lovely and appalling, or control the swings in her self-awareness that leave her dizzy and confused with her heart on her lips. She feels, however, that this very moment falls into the _unbearable_ category, her friends' voices ringing through her brain, ricocheting within her hollow ribcage as their gazes scorch her pale skin, stripped bare for all the world to see. The sheer idea of revealing just a bit of herself, something as shallow as a pair of white, naked arms – just a hint of _fragility_ – feels enormous; what she's giving away is personal, a little shameful, it's like letting her guard down and her protection slip away. The slight wind is blowing right through her – let her huddle. Let her hide.

Cassie struggles, breaking free from the girls' grasp and leaping back with her arms automatically wrapping themselves around her chest, holding tight; she does her best, truly, to keep up the pretence, but her voice shoots up two octaves over the word _fine_, and they're not buying it, she can tell. The sun makes her hair shine so blindingly, though it's a little limp, a little dull; it's still too bright for the likes of Cassie, a corona of mangled light that means nothing lovely at all.

Spring might just turn out to be something else she'll need to lie her way out of, she realizes – with a fleeting taste of panic upon her tongue.

* * *

Of course spring is also the season for love. She couldn't really forget that, could she? Obviously not.

Birds are singing, girls are giggling and cheeks colour brightly, aflame with newly-born feelings – it is sweet, foreign and refreshing, almost like growing into a brand new being. Beginnings, beginnings – maybe they can be something, Sid and her. Maybe they can be lovely, with shyness and fluttering hearts, maybe she can trust again – so many maybes. Maybe the time is just right and everything's going to fall into place. Somehow, Cassie finds herself believing in fate again, finding little signs. (_Look up if you like me. Please, please, look up if you like me._)

She can make it: a huge smile and a little push in the right direction, and she'll forget his awkwardness, the little jerk he can be sometimes when she doesn't seem to be the person he wants to see, she'll call it bashfulness, deem it endearing, blur the lines a little more. The time will come for her after all, it can, it has – and she'll be loved.

_Wake up, Sid,_ she thinks, _wake up and see me, wake up and see me_. But he sees Michelle everywhere, and after a while, so does she. The whole world is full of Michelle, beautiful and strong, everybody wants her. Michelle is alive and Michelle is life: Cassie sees her in random faces on the streets, in flashes at the corners of her mirror, all the time. Sid fancies her – _but he really loves Michelle_.

It's everyone's story, and it's everyone's cliché. Michelle is beautiful and everybody loves her; Sid is stupid, he can't see what he has, what he might have, until it's slipping right between his fingers. Cassie's story is a stupid teenage romance – she's not what he wants – it is plain, harsh, simple, just something more that she cannot have. She doesn't have anything, anyway, and yes, yes – it's too much.

It has to stop.

* * *

Spring is there, and she wakes up with a taste of death in her mouth.

Everything is whiteness and bright lights, and she could almost think _wow, maybe this is heaven,_ but she knows better. Heaven is less blinding, or so she hopes, it doesn't have annoying beeping sounds and as far as she's aware, Jal isn't supposed to be there – squeezing her hands and actually crying, on top of that. Things definitely didn't go according to plan, and through the haziness she doesn't know whether to be relieved, or angry, or scared, or everything at the same time. She's just really, immensely tired, so she settles for feeling nothing, and allows her eyes to drift closed again, for now.

The darkness welcomes her, familiar and lurking with not-so-restful thoughts as her brain stirs and becomes more alert. It had taken so long, scolds the poison in her mind, to get them all to trust her again, to believe her again, to stop watching and assume she was _fine, better – so much better_. It had taken so long, and for one boy and one too many fits of despair, she's ruined it all. She's tried to escape, and failed, like things fail all the time – for people are pulling her back, shaking their heads like they've got it all figured out, like they can decide for her. As though they knew, as though they saw – when they see nothing, not even her.

_Now,_ cackle the voices, _you'll have to begin again, all over again_.

She is so _exhausted_, so full of ringing, bittersweet emptiness, fragile and defeated on a hospital bed with her friend's fingers digging into her hand as though she were about to be sucked into nothingness and disappear. Cassie breathes in, slowly, deeply; the little she knows of life is weighing down on her chest, smothering and suffocating. So much she's got left to go through.

Overcome by the anxiety of being alive, she squeezes Jal's hand back with limp fingers.

It's another beginning, yes, in the endless cycle.


End file.
